


Star-Struck

by Nosferatank



Series: Beingverse [7]
Category: A Hat in Time (Video Game)
Genre: Accidental Drug Use, Gen, Gender Identity, Genderfluid Character, Intersection of gender & the weird eldritch species they got turned into, Introspection, trans author
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 19:22:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29846304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nosferatank/pseuds/Nosferatank
Summary: Snatcher eats some mushrooms on accident, stares at the stars, and thinks, and experiments.
Relationships: Hat Kid & Snatcher (A Hat in Time), The Florist & Snatcher (A Hat in Time)
Series: Beingverse [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2060283
Comments: 8
Kudos: 26





	Star-Struck

**Author's Note:**

> Shoutout to Fizzysquish for arting about Snatcher accidentally getting high on mushrooms so I could go ‘wait actually that works’ since I’ve been waiting for a way to insert this particular queer headcanon into the ‘verse anyways. And my experience during my questioning phase (which wasn't all that long ago) definitely includes talking about Gender™ with my friends while drunk. Not the same as weird magic mushrooms but eh, close enough. 
> 
> Fic is Beingverse canon, as you can guess (there are also references to things that happened in the previous fics), but can also be read as a standalone.
> 
> Anyways go check out Fizz on tumblr! Their art is REALLY good!

Looking up at the night sky was like looking into the ocean- the breathless dark of it all, the pinpricks of light-motes slowly spinning across the surface, something that spread even further than all his roots and thorns.

Snatcher figured the floatiness was only something felt in the ocean, probably, rather than felt laying in the dust and watching the night literally pass him by. 

Maybe he shouldn’t have eaten that thing. He was starting to lose track of where his face was- quite literally, as he currently was staring at both the night sky and an eyeful of the dust-pit the back of his head was pillowed in. 

Something crunched in the foliage to his right. But Snatcher didn't want to bother rousing from his floating thoughts, so he simply moved one of his eyes right under the edge of his ear-hole, looking in the direction of the sound. 

The source of the bush-rustling was a familiar one. “Dude,” Camellia said, just barely managing to loom over his face despite how short she was in comparison, even as he was lying down. “ _What_ are you doing.”

“ _Am_ I a dude, though?” Snatcher blurted out, thoughts floating almost as much as he felt his body floating. 

“Uh- I mean, you are one if you feel like you are?” Camellia questioned. And then began to shift out of his peripheral vision- wait, no, one of his eyes was drifting across his face again. “Did you… are you okay? Did something happen?”

Snatcher wriggled around in the dust-pit to get more comfortable. When he realized Cam was just behind his head, he rotated it upside-down and around to face her properly. “Ate one of the mushrooms from the swamp,” he said, recalling how oddly tantalizing the glowing fungus had looked; it appealed to him the same way an unmoored soul did, but more fibrous and chewy and plantlike.

Camellia couldn’t wrinkle her nose, given the lack of face, but Snatcher got the impression she was anyways. “Aren’t those supposed to be, like, insanely poisonous?”

“Yeah, to people. I’m not a people, so _hah_.”

“... Okay, so enlighten me. _Why_ did you eat a bunch of the insanely poisonous mushrooms?”

“It’s the kid,” Snatcher grumbled. “It’s like- like part of her is still stuck in here, y’know?” Absently, he waved his talons towards his head, nearly pricking himself in the face with his own claw. “So mushrooms and plants look like food.”

He hadn’t even realized what he’d eaten until it was halfway down his gullet and already burning in his flame-core. And then his mind seemed to expand and drift, his thoughts carried like feathers on the wind. About himself, and how he looked like now and in the past, and if some human concepts even applied to him anymore. Like gender. 

He didn’t even _have_ any of the necessary parts anymore, which, sure, whatever, he didn’t want blood-children, but he _thought_ he was a man, at some point. He didn’t even have the reference point of being born in the ‘wrong body’ like his long-dead Pryce cousin had; Snatcher’s body was his own- the _right_ one, in every sense of the word.

If it wasn’t something going weird in his body, maybe it was something going weird in his _brain_. Sharing skullspace with Hattie leaving some consequences- except wait, no, he’d _always_ felt like this, for centuries, so it couldn’t be that. Did Beings even _have_ gender? Was a lack of it why Snatcher looked the way he did?

Clearly, the mushrooms were a trap, if they were making him _think_ this much.

Stone-grinding grit-sounds made him twitch, as Camellia snapped her granite fingers above his face. “You’re drifting again, man- uh, I mean…”

“Urgh…” Snatcher rolled over, ignoring Cam’s yelp as she scrabbled out of the way, and shoved his face into the dirt. “You’re a woman, even with the whole statue-body, yeah?”

“Was it ever in question?” Camellia snorted. 

Slowly, because the world was kind of starting to spin, Snatcher raised his head to face her. “See, that’s exactly my point! You’re so _sure_ despite of it, so like, why aren’t I?”

“Um. I can’t answer that question for you.”

“Ugh, I _know_.” Snatcher twitched his tail, pondering, mindless of the storm of shed leaves it whipped up. “But you dress like a woman, and talk like one, and you’re _human-_ a dead one, but still. Like even if I could do those things, I don’t _want_ to, even if I don’t want to be just a man.”

Camellia sighed, in that breathy fluttering way that tugged at the cowl over her head. “Spirits, you are _way_ overthinking this. Pretty much all of us are _dead_. It doesn’t _matter_ if you act like… whatever you feel you are.”

Like a spark under the tree-shade, Snatcher realized she was actually _right_. If there were no living humans to interpret him as a particular gender, he didn’t need to present in the way they would _expect_ him to. Hah! _Duh_! So what if he wasn’t a man just because he wasn’t human anymore? It’s not like he could be human again anyway- not that he wanted to. It sounded _inconvenient_. 

“Cam, that’s _genius_.” Snatcher shoved his face into hers- almost misjudging the distance and bowling her over. “That’s- that’s smart. When did you get so smart.”

“I’ve had three hundred years to get smart, dumbass,” Camellia said fondly, squishing his feathery cheeks the way she used to when they were children- although now she had to stretch both arms all the way out to do so. “Also, unlike you, _I’m_ not high off death-mushrooms.”

“Oh, pshh,” Snatcher scoffed, smoke blowing from his mouth in rings as he pulled back from her grip. And puffed out a few more smoke-clouds, just for good measure. They were more floaty than he was. “I’m sharp as a chronoton ship-prong.”

“I don’t know what that is, dude.” Camellia spun the twin glows under her cowl in an approximation of rolling her eyes. “And you’re loopy as hell. Sleep it off, okay?”

“ _You_ sleep it off,” Snatcher grumbled. He still wanted to stare at the stars moving.

(He woke up tied up into a knot around a tree trunk. Thankfully, Camellia was not around to witness that particular indignity.)

\--

Snatcher had all the time in the world to experiment, lurking from expression to expression like lava in the earth’s veins. Compared to a three-century period of refusal, it was easy to settle, though, once the gates opened.

‘He’ was an old friend. It had been with Snatcher for his life as a human, and it had died alongside that humanity with him in the cellar- cold, and angry, and revolted, and sick of being touched and seen. 

‘He’ was ‘Lord Luka’, and then ‘Prince Luka’, and ‘brother’. Cool and soothing in its familiarity, like rain on the forest canopy that he felt in his feathers, despite remaining dry. 

Snatcher deepened the wavelengths of his voice and intent- even if most people could never catch on to them, that didn’t matter to him- just that he _could_. 

\--

‘She’ was new, like greenwood set alight. Just as sharp as it was bright, like the glint of sunlight on a blade. Snatcher reveled in that strength, because she was _fire_ , stubborn and lethally sharp-soft like sparks hidden in coal veins and tree-roots, just _waiting_ to erupt. 

So when Hattie entered the tree hollow to pester her about something, the little alien squinted, and the fire erupted, yes- but a low rumbling, like cheerful steam from a volcano.

“Something seems different about you…” Hattie observed, tilting her head back and forth; it was an observation, rather than a question, but Snatcher answered her anyway. 

Snatcher tilted her head down, looming tall as a basalt spire. “Of course I’m different. Can’t you tell?” It would be surprising if Hattie _could_. Snatcher’s words were still deep and thrumming with the undertone of a hiss- not all that different from her usual voice. Her feathers were dimmed and void-dark, rather than shaded with midnight, and her ear-tufts shorter in contrast to her larger bulk. 

_Something_ in her voice must have registered to Hattie, as the girl wiggled a finger in her ear experimentally. “You… sound different. But not? Like-” Hattie sketched out vague swirls and arcs with her fingers. “-like your vibes, or some kind of weird radiation. It’s _weird_.”

Maybe Hattie _could_ tell. After resetting the world and swapping their souls back, Snatcher had read every book on Beings she could get her claws on, now that she could actually _read_ Tempean, courtesy of Hattie’s knowledge of it. The books certainly explained some things, like how the minions and Cam had to ask him to clarify his intent so frequently, beyond just the different sets of body language. Or like how even just being near Time’s ponderous whisker-strokes felt like being electrocuted from the force of its projected territory-lines; Snatcher had wanted to crawl straight out of Hattie’s brain and make a run for it, damn the consequences. 

But since Hattie’s soul had also occupied Snatcher’s body- a Being’s body- perhaps she could pick up her… wavelengths, as it were. “Well, there is something different about me! Today I am a ‘she’.” 

“Oooh, like my cousin Lee! They were a guy when I was little, but now they’re not,” Hattie grinned, pleased with her apparent realization. “So, are you a girl now, or…?”

“Hmm, yes, but also no,” Snatcher said, unable to resist her snow-sharp cackle as Hattie groaned and smacked her forehead with a palm.

“Ugh, I should’ve known you wouldn’t be helpful,” Hattie grumbled. “It’s like you _try_ to be the most obnoxious sister on the planet.”

The seething fire-core that functioned as Snatcher’s approximation of a heart and lungs twitched, at that. She denied to herself how nice the title felt.

\--

‘They’ felt vast and protected, to Snatcher. Like the thorns rippling down their spine like a dragon’s, or the quills sheathed and hidden in their tail-feathers, or the soft pulse of fire behind their teeth. But also like the impossible softness of downy feathers, or the wood-sweet scent of smoke. A paradox. ‘They’ was a plurality, encompassing every individual root and stone and cell in Subcon Forest, and a singularity, the Subcon Forest Being acting as one mega-organism. 

“Boss! _Boss_!” A minion hopped up the brambled steps to Snatcher’s den. “We found one!”

Snatcher snapped shut their book on Tempean colonial law. “Excellent, I was wondering who was stepping all over my grass so haphazardly.” _And_ they were wondering if they would eventually need to start hunting outside of their usual haunt- ever since Vanessa’s death, and the lingering number of fools who crossed the border lessened even more as the years went by, Snatcher had felt the tug of hunger more often.

It was inconvenient, but they were perfectly capable of hunting outside of Subcon. They just had to remember that some mortals were off-limits. 

Slowly, Snatcher slithered through the trees, even the leaf-litter refusing to crackle under their bulk and give their position away to their prey. 

The prey in question was a Mafia- not the tastiest thing in the world, with no blood to soften them, but at least Mafia had souls. 

And really, if that mustachioed girl didn’t want Snatcher eating her goons, she should have put a leash on them. Never mind how one managed to make his way across the ocean and into Snatcher’s forest. 

As Snatcher approached him, the Mafia stopped, tense, as if he felt the full brunt of the forest’s uncountable eyes-ears-feelers. “Who is here with Mafia? Show yourself!”

So he was more perceptive than Snatcher thought. That suited them just fine- they may as well have a little fun with him, after all. 

The enormous oak bent willingly under Snatcher’s claws as they climbed, and obligingly creaked its branches to touch the other canopy-tops, so that they could slither from tree to tree until they were ahead of the Mafia’s path.

Just as the Mafia passed under them, they uncoiled themself ahead of him, upside-down and suspended by their tail. 

“ _Boo_.”

**Author's Note:**

> The ‘born in the wrong body’ understanding of transness is, as you can guess, outdated- which makes sense given how long ago it was, even though Subcon and Omnoc weren’t exactly transphobic societies (though it’s worth mentioning their Thing was that unions should produce heirs- which comes with its own capital i Issues).
> 
> Beings do not sexually reproduce- the closest thing they have is like, budding, in the case of a few specific subspecies like nebulae and moons. Otherwise? They just straight up do not have the necessary equipment or, more importantly, the mental chemistry for it. Which suits Snatcher just fine- he’s always been aroace! However in my experience it’s a little harder to pin down some gender identity aspects without sexual orientation to lean on, in a way. 
> 
> Either way, good lord it is harder than I thought to actualize the age-old gender self-reflection into actual words. Literally the most purple pretentious shit I’ve written in AGES lmao.
> 
> Pixel gif at the end by Dahon- who doesn’t have a tumblr but if he ever opens comms I’ll link them here!
> 
> [My Tumblr](https://banyanas.tumblr.com)  
> 


End file.
